In May, Steven Pinker published in the New Republic a jeremiad against dignity as a tool of thought in bioethics. Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, works at the interface of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and psychology. He is, like most of that kind of psychologist, a . . . . Continue Reading »
An article has been published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) entitled “Bioethics Crisis Looms Unless NIH Changes Course, Critics Warn,” byline Richard Monastersky. Bioethics crisis? Apparently, practitioners believe we need more bioethicists to tell us what . . . . Continue Reading »
Is “human dignity” a useful concept in bioethics? Does it shed important light on the whole range of bioethical issues? Or is it instead a useless concept—a slogan that camouflages unconvincing arguments and unarticulated biases? The President’s Council on Bioethics recently asked me . . . . Continue Reading »
Sometimes I think that to some bioethicists, it’s all a mind game. The latest example is an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on a hunger strike, and the authors are upset because army doctors are helping to force feed them. . . . . Continue Reading »
Leon Kass has described himself as a strange man who writes strange and untimely books. Given the intellectual condition of the contemporary academy, this is by no means a bad thing. Trained professionally as a physician and biochemist, Kass has, without formal academic training, taught courses in . . . . Continue Reading »
human cloning and human dignity: the report of the president’s council on bioethics with a foreward by leon r. kass, m.d., chairman public affairs, 352 pages, $14 paper On the cover of Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics is the image of a . . . . Continue Reading »
Near the beginning of the twenty-fourth and last Book of Homer’s Iliad, called by Simone Weil “the only true epic” the West possesses, even the gods—detached as they are in their bliss from all sufferings—have seen enough. Achilles has become inhuman. Ignoring our animal nature, . . . . Continue Reading »
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